The communist leader who turned Czechoslovakia into a people's democracy through the February 1948 coup
We are the party of the Czechoslovak proletariat and our supreme chief of staff is indeed Moscow. We go to Moscow to learn from the Russian Bolsheviks how to wring your necks. That grin will be wiped off your faces! Maiden speech in the Czechoslovak National Assembly, 21 December 1929
Born into a poor Moravian peasant household, he helped found the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) in 1921 and became its general secretary in 1929, leading it until his death. A Comintern secretary from 1935 to 1943, he helped shape the Popular Front line, and in May 1945 he returned to Prague as deputy prime minister and National Front chairman. After the KSČ won 38 per cent in the 1946 elections he became prime minister, and following the February 1948 coup he was elected Czechoslovakia's first Communist president on 14 June 1948. As president he drove nationalisation and agricultural collectivisation and instigated the trials of Milada Horáková, executed in 1950, and of Rudolf Slánský and Vlado Clementis, executed in 1952; he died on 14 March 1953.
Career timeline
- 1921Co-founds the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ)
- 1929–1945General Secretary of the KSČ Central Committee
- 1935–1943Secretary of the Comintern
- 1938–1945Exile in Moscow; leads Czechoslovak communist resistance
- 1945–1946Deputy Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia
- 1946–1948Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia
- 1948–1953President of Czechoslovakia
KSČ General Secretary who organized the February 1948 coup and built Czechoslovakia's people's democracy as its operational architect
In September 1947 Slánský returned from the Cominform founding meeting with Moscow's directive to seize power. 'As in the international field, we have gone on the offensive on the domestic front as well' — the February 1948 coup had begun.
After joining the KSČ Central Committee and Politburo in 1929, he rose as Gottwald's closest lieutenant. During WWII he directed Czechoslovak broadcasts from Moscow and fought in the 1944 Slovak National Uprising. As General Secretary (1945–1951), he mastered the party apparatus and directed the operational work of the February 1948 coup, converting Czechoslovakia into a Soviet-aligned people's democracy. Arrested in 1951, he was tried and executed in 1952 on charges of conspiracy, Trotskyism, Titoism and Zionism: the most distinctly antisemitic purge trial in the Eastern Bloc. Rehabilitated 1963; party membership restored 1968.
Career timeline
- 1921Joins the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ)
- 1924Editor of Rudé Právo, the KSČ central organ
- 1927–1928Regional party secretary in Ostrava
- 1928–1929Regional party secretary in Kladno
- 1929Elected to the KSČ Central Committee and Politburo
- 1935–1938Deputy, National Assembly of Czechoslovakia
- 1939–1945Exile in Moscow; chief editor of Czechoslovak Radio Moscow, partisan in Slovak National Uprising
- 1945–1951General Secretary of the KSČ Central Committee
- 1948Commander of the People's Militia; directs operational work of the February coup
- 1951Deputy Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia
